Red Shoes
by AnitaHoward
Summary: "I can't stay," he said. "Just remember: don't try on any of the red shoes." A Doctor/Donna ONLY fic. Three parts, COMPLETE.
1. Part One

_Red Shoes_

_Part One_

Donna tried on the shoes. They were a bit tight. She took them off and reached up to put the box back on the shelf; a hand took the box and did it for her.

"Doctor!" she said, surprised. "I thought you were at the other end of the store! What are you doing here?"

Grinning at her, he walked away. She shook her head. "That was odd."

"What was?"

She shrieked and looked around. The Doctor was standing just behind her, but there was something different about him. Oh, of course! He wasn't wearing his tie. He had been wearing it when he walked away … in the other direction.

"How in the world …?"

He quirked his eyebrow at her. "I'm sorry?"

"You were just over there a minute ago, going that way. How did you get behind me?"

"I just came over to ask if you like these new shoes." He lifted his foot to show her. "What do you think?"

She blinked several times before replying. "They're nice. Yeah, they're nice."

"Good. Brilliant. I'll buy them." He looked at her as if trying to figure out why she seemed confused. "Donna? Are you all right? Is something bothering you?"

"It's just … you must be a fast walker."

"It's the shoes." He pointed at them and smiled broadly. "Have you finished yet?"

"Are you kidding? I've only looked at two aisles out of the three hundred they have here. I'll be looking for several more hours. Why don't you go tinker with the Tardis?"

"I think I will. Take your time."

"Molto bene," Donna said with a smile. "Oi, you're rubbing off on me, spaceman!"

"That's molto bene, isn't it?" He ducked as she tried to hit him, then turned to go. Donna watched him until he went around a corner, then went back to trying on shoes. A pair of dressy black heels caught her eye; she put them on and then walked around to see how they felt.

"Molto bene! You should buy those, Donna."

She spun around, wobbling, and the Doctor caught her arm. Now that was odd. He had his trench coat on, but he'd left it in the Tardis. She had seen him lay it on the console.

"All right, Doctor, tell me what's going on. How do you keep popping up like this?"

"I can't stay," he said. "Just remember: don't try on any of the red shoes."

"Why not? I like red!"

But he was already trotting away on those long legs. Donna was becoming concerned. Either she was losing her mind, or time was going wonky on her. Or … the Doctor was playing time-tricks. Which she thought he wasn't supposed to do because of paradoxes, but then again, this was the Doctor she was talking about. _So why can't I try on the red shoes? It's probably some silly little game he's playing to keep himself occupied while he's waiting for me. I bet he said it so that I _would_ try them on. He knows I like red. He's trying to help me out, in that backwards way of his._

She continued browsing the aisles, but she couldn't get the thought of red shoes out of her mind. Then she found them: six whole rows of every shoe imaginable, all of them different shades of red, from almost-pink to deep scarlet. She stood for a moment, casting about in her mind what she should do, when it hit her like a thunderbolt. _The shoes the Doctor showed me were red. He was wearing red shoes._

So, he _did _want her to get some red shoes. Probably so they would match. He had suggested against it because he knew she wouldn't listen if he told her to buy them. Or something. _Who knows what goes through that spaceman's mind? And who cares? These shoes are gorgeous!_

She decided that, just to be on the safe side, she would only pick one pair, and she would only put one shoe on to see how it fit before she got back to the Tardis. She scanned the rows slowly and felt her resolve weakening. There were so many of them! And she liked almost all of them! There were those leather sandals in a low-toned autumn red, and those brilliant high heels with tiny rosettes, and red trainers like the Doctor sometimes wore, and Oh! Those magnificent dark-red shoes with just a tiny bit of heel but a whole lot of style. She grew a bit dazed as she gathered box after box in her arms and shoved them into the trolley. She would try them on at the end of this row; she didn't want to keep going back and forth.

Finally she sat down and pulled the dark red pair out. She didn't put them on at first, just admired them. She couldn't wait to show the Doctor, and she did hope he wouldn't be cross. After all, he'd had red shoes too. At last she couldn't bear it any longer. She slipped the shoes on. They fit like a dream, and she walked around in them, admiring the way they made her feet feel light and free. She didn't want to take them off. It was right about this time that she realized it was odd for the Doctor to have been still wearing the shoes he had shown her. Why hadn't he put them back in the box first, shown them to her, then paid and put them on? Well, whatever. These were perfect and she was going to buy them now. She left the trolley and started out for the checking counter, which was exactly between the men's and women's sections of the store.

About halfway there, her left foot started twitching. Then her right. It felt for all the world like her feet were trying to dance without her permission. Not that she minded. Dancing sounded wonderful. _No, stop it,_ she told herself. _This is weird. Ow! There they go again!_ She sat down, but her feet rebelled and she found herself standing again. The right foot tapped the floor, then the left foot, then she was doing a small jig. _Maybe this is what the Doctor was talking about? Why can't he just be plain and give me a reasonable explanation? Like, the red shoes will start dancing you around? _"Oh, help!"

What was that noise? Music? Yes, it sounded like a polka. She couldn't tell if it was in her head or coming from somewhere nearby, but her feet responded accordingly.

"Blast it!" Donna shouted. "Someone come and get these off of me!" Then she remembered that the store was automated and there were no employees to hear her. Well, she would just have to figure out a way to do it herself. She looked around as the music changed to a fast, pulsing beat. Everything was a blur as she began to whirl around, faster and faster. "This has to stop!" she shrieked.

_To Be Continued ..._


	2. Part Two

_Part Two_

Keeping her wits about her was very difficult, but she realized that the shoes were dancing her in a certain direction, towards a door marked as … what was it? It blurred so much that it took her a long time to see what it said, but at last she made it out: Dance Hall.

"Oh great," she groaned. "If I go in there, I'll never come out again."

In desperation, she grabbed onto a shelf. It collapsed with her underneath. She had landed on her back, and she was pinned. "Oh no oh no oh no," she muttered. Then, "Wait a minute! This is my chance!"

Her feet were still moving to the music, but her legs were stuck so they couldn't go along. It was actually quite bizarre looking. Carefully, Donna moved her hand down, twisting her torso as much as she could, and reached out for her left shoe. She couldn't quite get a hold of it; the stupid thing was moving like a maniac to the salsa music that (she now knew) was coming from the dance hall.

"What's the motive, huh?" she yelled, trying to catch hold of the shoe. "Why would someone want to trap people in a dance hall forever? Doctor? Doctor! Where in the _world_ are you?"

There! She had the shoe by the heel. She jerked it sharply up towards her so that it wedged between the floor and the shelf, and was then able to get her foot out of it.

"It's possible," she gasped, starting with the other shoe. This one was trickier because of the angle she was at, but she was now able to use her left foot to help her and finally the blasted thing came off. "Oh _yes_!" She wanted to dance a jig after that victory, but immediately the desire left her. She had done enough dancing to last her a lifetime. And now the problem was how to get out from under this shelf. It wasn't really all that heavy (thankfully, or her ribs might have been cracked) but it was big and she was on her back, which didn't give her a lot of maneuvering power.

"One, two, three!" She pushed upwards. It moved a little, so she got an idea. She pushed it up several inches and was able to slide her legs over towards free floor space. After doing this several times, she was out. Now to find the Doctor. She was pretty sure she knew where he was.

Just then a door slammed and she heard voices. Peering around a corner, she saw five men in green uniforms.

"Someone just escaped the shoes," said one. "Why else would we have been called here?"

Holding her breath, Donna edged her way towards the dance hall. If she could just free the Doctor, he would know how to deal with these stinking rats. They were coming towards her; she could hear the clicking of their boots, their curses; she thought she could smell their foul breath. When she was back in the open, she made a dash for the door.

"There she is!" shouted a soldier. "Grab her, but don't hurt her!"

She flung open the door and then slammed it shut, wishing she had the sonic screwdriver. Then she turned around to get her bearings. She was in a small entrance way. Music was blasting from speakers nearby, and there was another door. She had no choice but to enter it.

The dance floor was filled with people of all sorts and descriptions. All varieties of aliens with at least two feet were dancing wildly about to the salsa music. Donna looked around frantically for the Doctor and the door burst open. She edged into the crowd and began dancing her way through it, keeping one eye on the soldiers. Where was the Doctor? He should be easy to spot, but she couldn't see him. What if he had gone to the Tardis? What if the shoes hadn't affected him? What if...

"STOP!" boomed one of the soldiers. He turned the music off, and instantly everyone came to a dead stop. Except for Donna, who hadn't been expecting it. She continued to dance for a few seconds until she realized, and then she was staring down the barrel of a gun.

"Go on, then," she said. "I know you're not gonna use it on me. You need me, or us, for something. What is it? Tell me."

"Ha," said the soldier. "Like I'd tell you."

Just then another soldier stepped up, holding those beautiful, disgusting shoes. "I think you lost something," he said, in a polite tone.

"I'll know I have if I'm stupid enough to put those things on again."

"Sit down," the first soldier ordered.

She sighed; her shoulders slumped, and she began to lower herself to the floor. Then she kicked him hard in the shins and set off running.

"Doctor!" she shouted. "If you're in here, let me know! Do something, anything! Doctor?"

The whole crowd of dancers stood as if rooted to the spot. There must have been six or seven hundred of them. How could she possibly find him? She looked back; the soldiers were gaining on her. But she'd been running with the Doctor for a while now, and knew how it was done.

She wove in and out among the dancers, feeling as if she was leading a complicated dance herself. She took a glance at every face, hoping to see the Doctor. Then she heard a weak, exhausted voice say, in a half-whisper, "Donna."

There he was, standing perfectly still but looking straight at her. The soldier caught up to her and grabbed for her wrist, but she ducked behind the Doctor and took off running again.

This was never going to work. She couldn't keep running around and around until she dropped. She had to come up with a better plan.

"Sorry about this, mate," she said, turning around and knocking one of the stock-still dancers over so that he fell right in front of the soldier. The man tripped and fell over the body, but Donna was already at the Doctor's side. She pushed him flat on his back and yanked the shoes off. In a split second she had to decide between throwing the shoes as far as she could, fishing for the sonic screwdriver, or helping the Doctor to his feet. She chose the second option, as he was in no condition to stand at the moment, and shoved the sonic right into the approaching soldier's face.

"Hold it right there, sunshine," she said. "Step back five paces. One touch of this button here, and your gun explodes."

"What is that thing?" he asked, doing as she said.

"Oh, you wouldn't understand all the intricate nuclear technologies that make it up." She put on her fiercest scowl. "Now drop your gun and tell all your men to do so as well."

The man hesitated, and Donna raised the screwdriver threateningly.

"Donna, look out!" she heard the Doctor say.

She spun around just as the second soldier slammed into her. She felt all the air leave her lungs in a rush, and found herself on the floor.


	3. Part Three

_A/N: I changed the place in the last chapter where it said 'a lot of soldiers' to 'five soldiers' because I wanted it to be a bit more realistic. A horde of soldiers would have caught Donna in no time. Five wouldn't because three are guarding outside the doors and checking the rest of the building for security/electronic breaches. So, on to the story!_

_Part Three_

Donna wanted to bang her head against a wall and shout very nasty things. But she knew she needed to keep a clear head, and she needed her mouth for rattling off arguments at ninety-miles-an-hour, since the Doctor wasn't up to it.

The soldier had twisted her arms around behind her and had then led her to a seat.

"Shoes, please," he said. They were handed to him, and Donna knew she had to act fast.

"So, since I'm about to be dancing for the rest of my life, tell me: why are you doing this? What's the point? I mean, besides the fact that it's mean and probably illegal, it's downright stupid as well! Oi! I'm not finished talking, mate! I deserve five minutes at least, right? I can't get away, so you might as well give me the reasons for what you're doing to me."

"Oh, shut up," the man said. "Figure it out for yourself, if you're so clever."

"Hang on then, I can do this. Let me think. If you want people dancing, then it's for either one of two reasons: one, someone really likes to party, or two, a dance hall that's failing needs to look like it's _not _failing. Am I right?"

"Hardly."

"All right then, hang on, it's coming to me! Oh, yes! You look like you're advanced with all your automation and guns and things, but you are actually worshipers of some ridiculous cult where people have to dance without stopping. Sort of like not letting a light go out, ever, or you get punished. So you make it where these people _can't_ stop dancing, and when they fall over and die of exhaustion, well, you've got a new batch ready, am I right?"

The soldier frowned. "How did you figure that out?"

She shrugged carelessly. "I saw the little stone-idol-looking-thing sewn on your sleeve."

The man looked down. "Where?"

"Right there!" She jerked her arm out of the other soldier's grasp and gave him a punch to the nose. It made her fist sting, but she was gratified when his nose began to bleed. She hooked her foot behind his leg and sent him toppling, then raced back to the Doctor. He was sitting up and shaking his head.

"Doctor? Doctor! We need to go now! Hurry up!"

She took his arm and tried to haul him to his feet.

"All right, all right," he said, his words slightly slurred. "Just gimme a minute."  
"We don't have a minute, Doctor!"

"You know the routine, Donna."

She looked at him in bewilderment, then realized what he meant. "OK, spaceboy. Get ready for a whopper!"

She turned around and saw the soldiers coming towards them. The one she had tripped still lay on the floor. She hoped she'd given him a nasty concussion. Giving her attention to the Doctor, she licked her lips and then kissed him more fervently than she had in Lady Eddison's house. He stumbled back, gasping for breath, and immediately fell down.

"It's fine. I'm fine. Don't worry … Donna! Behind you!"  
"Oh, no you don't. Not this time," she muttered. She spun around as she had last time, but this time with both hands balled into fists. One connected with a soldier's face, the other with his gun. Ouch, that didn't feel so good. She made a grab for the gun, was punched in the stomach, and saw the Doctor ram into the man at the same time. Which was good, because right now she was gasping for breath.

The sound of punching and _oophing_ echoed around the room, and suddenly a hand pulled her to her feet.

"Get with it, girl!" Hang on, she knew that voice. She looked up into her own eyes; there she was, standing right there in front of herself! "They're calling in reinforcements and sealing the building," her other self (who was wearing what appeared to be a pair of the Doctor's shoes) said. "You have to get the Doctor's screwdriver."

"Where is it?"

"It's in the leader's jacket. If you put it on setting 7a, it will shatter the neural pulses … oh, blast it all, it will … help. A lot. Just do it!"

"Why don't you?" Donna muttered.

"Because when I was you thirty minutes ago my future self was saying all of this! Go on!"

"Good," thought Donna. "In thirty minutes we'll be out of this mess. I can handle thirty minutes." And then, "Goodness, am I always that tetchy?"

She ran to the side of the still-prone leader and got the sonic screwdriver, then scrolled through the settings until she got to 7a, and pressed it for all she was worth. There was an extremely loud sound, like an explosion. The walls all burst open and wires and other electronic … things popped out, broken and hanging. The dancers all rocked back and forth and then lay on the ground in various states of exhaustion or unconsciousness.

When Donna looked back at the fray, she realized that there was a future Doctor there as well, wearing his long coat. He and future-Donna were just tying up the last two soldiers, while the now-Doctor was going around checking on people.

"Donna? You all right?" he called.

"Yes!" Both Donna's said at the same time. Future-Donna shrugged and mouthed 'It happened before' with a smile.

The now-Doctor put on his glasses and pulled a shoe off of someone. "Oh, now that's clever," he said. "It transmits pulses to the brain, like post-hypnotic suggestion. It starts out slow but intensifies quickly. I figured that already." He grinned. "And brilliant work, Donna! Absolutely brilliant! By the way, how _did _you figure it out?"

"I guess you're rubbing off on me, spaceman," she said. "More than I thought."

"Molto bene," he said.

"Say that again," said Donna.

"Molto bene." He smiled as she said it with him.

"Now, what about all these people?" she asked. "And what about those reinforcements?"

"Well, I've called in a hospital ship. Who knows how long some of them have been dancing? Hours? Days? It almost did me in after an hour."

"Oh, Doctor, I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was an hour."

"That's all right. As for the other soldiers, I sent off our future selves to deal with them. We'll find out what we did when it's our turn to be them."

"Ugh," said Donna. "We're going to have to come back here in the middle of that fight again."

"Yeah." The Doctor frowned. "Why in the world did I ever think it was a good idea to risk a giant paradox?"

"I guess we'll never know." She smiled and linked her arm in his. "Let's get back to the Tardis, shall we?"

"Yes, we need to clean up a few things, don't we?"

"Oh! I forgot to tell you," said Donna. "A future you has to go in and warn me against putting on the red shoes." She blushed a bit.

"Then why did you put them on?"

"I can't even begin to explain it to you, Doctor. Just do it, OK? It's probably the only thing that saved our lives, because otherwise I wouldn't have noticed anything until it was too late. By the way, why weren't you able to get the shoes off?"

"Well, when I noticed that something was transmitting to my brain, I didn't know what it was at first. So I was running back to you to see if you'd noticed anything strange. And then, by the time I had realized what was happening I was too far gone but I still tried to get back over to you. Because I didn't know at the time that it was just the red shoes. So the harder I tried to resist them, the stronger the pulses became. After that I don't remember anything until you took the shoes off. Thanks for that, by the way."

"Any time, Doctor." A rather sad look came over her face. "I used to love shoes. Now I think I'd be happy with a ratty old pair of slippers."

"Oh, I don't know. Just be more careful next time you feel extremely drawn towards shoes."  
"But that's all the time!"  
He grinned. "Same here!"

_Finis_

**A/N: This is what you get when you think about Donna in a shoe store, and randomly also are thinking about the fairy tale of the little red shoes (rather a horrid tale, actually) and decide to make it into an adventure instead of just a fluffy one-shot where nothing really happens. Also, the timey-wimey stuff started out as just the Doctor playing time-tricks on Donna, until the red shoes came into my head. Anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed this! It was a lot of fun to write. Go to my profile to see more Doctor/Donna ONLY fics, and other fics as well! And comment if you like anything or have constructive criticism! I love to hear from people :D Thank you!**


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